The Hong Kong police are engaged in a tough battle; they face not only the gas bombs, blades, arrows, corrosive chemicals and bricks hurled head-on, but also the harsh words of those behind them who should be offering them support — the media, the courts and now even the advisers to their watchdog. 

The members of the Independent Expert Panel hired to advise the Independent Police Complaints Commission decided to quit on Wednesday, citing concerns that the commission is not qualified to fulfill its duties. 

The move comes just over a month after the panel issued a report claiming there was "a shortfall" in the IPCC's powers, capacity and independent investigative capability compared with the scale of events. But wasn't that the reason they were hired as advisers? Aren't they supposed to make up that shortfall and help the IPCC to improve its performance? 

Giving the panel leeway, one might generously say, as Anthony Neoh, the IPCC's head, has diplomatically done, that the panel does "not understand Hong Kong's situation". How can one excuse them for their failure to do what they were hired to do, when the panel members have used rulers they brought with them from their home countries to measure the scale of what is happening in the special administrative region? After all, in which of their countries are there large-scale foreign-backed violent secessionist campaigns?

A more objective view would be that all the panel has done is hit and run.

Which, given its members were former police supervisors from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and a British specialist on crowd behavior, is perhaps not that surprising.

Whatever their motives, their words have simply served the agenda of the anti-government forces, and their overseas inciters, who have been keen to shape civil discontent into a "color revolution". The excessive enthusiasm they have demonstrated over the panel's withdrawal has driven home the point how eager they are to welcome any parties willing to splash dirty water on the police and the SAR government, particularly at this moment when Hong Kong society is showing a disinclination to follow their lead.

In other words, their evaluation of the Hong Kong police is largely based on their out-of-context judgments, instead of the actual needs and the practical situations of Hong Kong, where the police, using riot-control techniques they learned from the West, are trying to protect and serve law and order in the city.

While the foreign backers of the opposition camp and their media mouthpieces decry the Hong Kong police for excessive use of force, their outrage is counterfeit. They wholeheartedly support the police in their efforts to uphold law and order when the rioting is in a Western country while condemning any actions by the police in Hong Kong. But such double talk is all part of the West's arsenal of dirty tricks.